


Just like the air, you can't see it there

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-06-10 03:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6937258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is a wanted man, but it's easy to slip around border control when you've got a privately owned quinjet available for your use.</p><p>Steve is disappointed that Sam doesn't want to go into exile with him in Wakanda, but there are sometimes more important things than standing by a friend.</p><p>Making amends, that kind of thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A four-letter verb I put in a sentence

**Author's Note:**

> Why is there not more fic of these two. Anyway.
> 
> All titles from _Love Ain't Just A Word_ by Rudimental.

**i.**

Sam is a wanted man, but it's easy to slip around border control when you've got a privately owned quinjet available for your use.

Steve is disappointed that Sam doesn't want to go into exile with him in Wakanda, but there are sometimes more important things than standing by a friend.

Making amends, that kind of thing.

**ii.**

The Avengers facility echoes without Steve and Nat and Wanda.

Tony never spent much time here anyway, and Vision is... Vision. Sam still doesn't know what he thinks of the android, beyond that he's accepted that Vision is a person in his own right, which some of the others still sometimes have trouble with.

He misses Wanda, though - kid's quiet, still grieving hard, but she fills up space with her crappy taste in music and her low, rare laughter, and she's a damn good cook, too.

Now it's just Sam, and Vision, and Rhodey.

"Don't you dare apologise," Rhodey says, face twisted with pain and shame when Sam walks into the common area on his first evening back and finds Rhodey disentangling himself from some kind of exoskeleton looking thing around his legs. "I'm a soldier as much as you are, Sam. I knew the risks."

"I didn't- Rhodey, I didn't know," Sam manages. "I thought the suit had protected you from the worst. I swear to God I didn't know."

He'd tried to catch Rhodey, except that it hadn't been Rhodey. Vision's beam had hit and all Sam'd been able to see was Riley, spiralling down into the pale Afghani hills in Helmand.

"I am sorry," he says, "even if you don't want to hear it."

Rhodey's smile is pained, and he clicks something and the leg-suit is suddenly upright beside his chair.

"Yeah, well," he says, "I believe it more from you than I do from the other guy, if that helps."

Vision, in the kitchen, looks up and seems untroubled. Sam wonders how long it takes to learn how to be a person, and wishes Vision's understanding could catch up with his knowledge.

**iii.**

It's hard to train without any sparring partners, so Sam finds himself getting fitter than ever. 

He runs laps of the compound, does sprints in the indoor gym, swims in the indoor pool and the artificial lake out by the tiny forest Tony had installed, because of course he did. He brushes off those old gymnastics moves he hasn't used on the ground since he was twelve or thirteen, and within two weeks of him starting back on the mat, a set of asymmetric bars and a professional quality trampoline appear in the gym - which was apparently restructured overnight to accommodate them. 

Sam thinks that all the new toys are as much for Rhodey's benefit as for his, but he's not going to complain. If it makes Tony happy to make sure Sam leaves Rhodey alone enough to grieve over all that he's lost with the use of his legs, then fine, that's fine.

Sam's going to be right here if Rhodey wants a friend, though. Tony is a great friend, even Steve wouldn't deny that, but he's also kind of absent a lot of the time, even when he's right beside you, and Rhodey might need someone a little less lost in their own head.

Sam's good at that. At grounding people. 

**iv.**

"I told Tony to take back the legs," Rhodey says, surprising Sam so much that he misses his landing and ends up bouncing on his ass for a solid minute. He's missed trampolining, sure, but he's still out of practice enough that he needs to  _think_ about what he's doing. It'll come back to him - it's muscle memory, after all - but for now, distraction is bad, and might end up in a broken ankle.

"Thought you were just starting to get used to them," Sam returns, once he finally comes to a stop. "Now that you've made your own adjustments, I mean."

Rhodey's an engineer too, not that Sam ever knew it until it was just the two of them. He always assumed that all the cool stuff on the War Machine suit came from Tony, or from that crazy Hammer guy the Air Force gave the suit to before Rhodey took it back, but having seen Rhodey attack those false legs of Tony's with a set of screwdrivers and a pliers, well, Sam's been reconsidering all kinds of things.

"Nah," Rhodey says easily, shrugging and wheeling his chair a little closer to the edge of the trampoline - Sam hopes he stays where he is, because it'll be a pain in the ass getting the chair back onto solid ground if he rolls forward even six inches - and smiling. "Tony's the best engineer in the world, and he's got a heart big enough for ten, but I think this is one of those times where he can't throw innovation at something and see it fixed. Gotta wait for medical science to catch up, I guess."

Sam settles himself on the padded edge - Iron Man red,  _of course -_ and frowns, not sure what to say to that.

"Or," he settles on, "we could fly to Wakanda, steal some of Steve's blood, and get that cute doctor in Seoul to throw something together."

"If she can make Vision," Rhodey agrees, half-serious but with laughter in his eyes, "she can build me a new spine, right?"

**iv.**

They don't fly to Wakanda, but they do fly. It's in a sort of gyrocopter thing Rhodey built because he was bored, with a specially modified little cab that can take Rhodey's chair.

Sam's more impressed than he'll ever admit, if only because Rhodey'll never let him live it down if he does.

"So," Rhodey says, while they're in the air and everything is very green and very blue and very far away. "You gonna tell me what you plan on doing, now you don't feel guilty anymore?"

"I'm always gonna feel guilty," Sam promises him, but he smiles as he says it, so it doesn't ring true and he knows it. "But I've had a few ideas. I mean, that kid Tony brought in, he can't be the only one, right? There's gotta be other kids with powers bigger than they are. Maybe we should help them."

Rhodey blinks at him, slow and surprised, and Sam's face feels all hot, like it used to get when Desirée Morgan winked at him over her Chem notes in senior year.

"I think we could do some real good," he says. "Keeping those kids safe from people who might try to hurt them, like Wanda and her brother were hurt. You know? Aren't we supposed to protect people, not just fight them?"

**v.**

Rhodey is a miracle-worker, apparently, or else he's a lot more important within the Air Force than Sam ever realised, because he... 

He makes the warrant for Sam's arrest disappear.

"The deal is," Rhodey says, "you won't use your wings without the express permission of the US Air Force and a chosen delegation of UN representatives."

"And if I use them, and don't get caught?"

"I saw nothing. Promise."

**vi.**

"I'm allergic to shellfish," Rhodey says as he zips past the kitchen, a stack of books in his lap with their spines turned in so Sam can't see. "And I don't like ginger on fish."

Sam says nothing, just sets aside the prawns and the raw ginger, and keeps on cooking. Every so often he glances up, and Rhodey is tearing through those big old textbooks like they're the funnies in the Sunday paper. 

He's always going to find it funny, that Tony Stark's best friend prefers hardcopy to digital, but hey, Captain America's best friend is a commie assassin, so they've all got their secrets, right?

Dinner that night is jambalaya, without the shellfish and the ginger, and Sam's face gets hot when Rhodey uses a chunk of crusty bread to soak up all the leftovers and then licks his fingers.

**vii.**

Sam leaves for one goddamn week, just to check in with his ma so she can be sure he's okay, and when he comes back, the compound has been converted into what feels kind of like a  _school._

"Listen," Rhodey says, rushing to explain the minute he sees understanding dawn on Sam's face. "If we're gonna have all these kids around, we've got to have the place set up for them."

So Sam sits down opposite Rhodey, and he listens. Classrooms and a gym aside from the one Sam uses, and huge chunks of the empty space in the west wing converted into compact individual sleeping rooms. There's a library, graciously filled by Tony and by Pepper, and there's a stack of resumes for Sam and Rhodey to go through so they can find teaching staff and healthcare staff and all the other kind of staff they're going to need to do this.

"We're starting a school," Sam says. "Is this... Legal?"

"Up until a month ago,  _you_ weren't legal," Rhodey points out. "I think we're gone a little beyond the legal code of the state of New York, okay? We're good. This is good."

 


	2. We should make it last, 'cause the feeling's rare

**viii.**

Rhodey's birthday comes around before Sam can do much more than get in touch with his old team, have them make a video all about how much they miss their colonel, and cook as much food as he can without setting himself on fire.

Stark's gift comes by courier. It's the deeds to the compound.

"I feel a little outdone," Sam admits, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck while Rhodey laughs, head thrown back and papers clutched to his chest. A new wheelchair had arrived the day before, all tricked out in gunmetal and chrome, and Sam had assumed that was from Stark - apparently not, unless Stark sends cool, thoughtful gifts as teasers for the  _absurd_ gifts that come after. 

"Nah," Rhodey says, shaking his head, still laughing a little. "Tony always goes a little overboard with birthdays - he doesn't really understand what an appropriate gift is."

"I mean," Sam tries, "he's given you a home. Like, there's no topping that."

"He's given me a building and some land," Rhodey corrects. "That's like you giving me an Under Armour shirt, Sam. Tony's got more property than the federal government. He could give houses to half of the population of New York state and still have a different home every month for three years. It's not a big deal."

Except, you know, it  _is._ Rhodey grew up in a big fancy house just outside of Boston, he came from money, even if not the kind of money the Starks think is normal. Sam grew up in a normal house in Chicago. His neighbours were a cop on one side and a butcher on the other, and he went to the local high school, played football and basketball and joined the Air Force to get through college. 

He wonders if Steve is even aware that Sam has a degree in Aeronautical Sciences from the Air Force Academy. Rhodey knows - they've talked about it, compared their experiences of college and come to the conclusion that yep, Rhodey had it easy at MIT - and, weirdly, Natasha knows, but Steve? Sam just isn't sure of anything with Steve anymore, after hearing how close Steve came to killing Stark in cold blood.

Stark's got a shiny new burn scar in the middle of his chest, right over the mess where his arc reactor used to sit. Sam's always known that Steve was lethal, right from the day they met, but to think of him turning all that strength and fury on someone who's a teammate, who's kind of a friend? That's scary. That's  _horrifying._

"It is a big deal," Sam says, shaking off his mood, "but I'm gonna cook dinner and pretend it isn't, okay?"

"I'll get the table set up," Rhodey agrees, and Sam knows that this isn't over, but he's not going to ruin Rhodey's birthday with one of their surprisingly rare arguments. "Did you make ice-cream?"

"Thought I'd go all out," Sam admits, a little sheepishly. "I tried mango sorbet, but I'm not making any promises."

**ix.**

"We're gonna need a name," Sam says, turning the huge pile of paperwork around so that Rhodey can look over it. "If we're gonna do this school thing, I mean."

"I've been thinking about that," Rhodey says, "and I think you have too. Am I wrong?"

"It's got to sound old-world," Sam says, "so it won't stand out in the local records. But not, like, Henry the Eighth High kind of old-world."

"You got someone in mind?"

Sam smiles, points to the paperwork, and folds his hands behind his head. 

Rhodey looks down, turns the page to where the details should be, and grins.

"Great minds think alike," he admits, laughing just enough for Sam to hear. "Shouldn't it be  _Memorial,_ though? He died the year before last."

"I wasn't sure how that'd go down," Sam says, "seeing as how, when I contacted the family to ask if they'd be okay with us using his name, I was informed that they've got a kid who'd just  _love_ to attend this kind of school."

"Coming from a military family?" Rhodey says, looking a little bitter, but mostly tired. "He'll be honoured. It's nice to think that your loved ones meant something to someone, trust me."

"Isaiah Bradley Memorial High School it is then," Sam says, wondering how long it'll be until he gets that particular story outta Rhodey. "It's gonna be hell on the letterheads."

**x.**

"A school for talented young people," the clerk says, deadpan and too flat, when they present themselves to register the school. "Let's just hope you don't cause as much trouble as the other one up Westchester way."

Sam looks to Rhodey, who shrugs in plain old confusion, just like Sam is feeling. 

"Other one?"

"You really  _are_ new around here, aren't you boys?" she laughs. "Everyone knows about Xavier's - you swing on down to the diner and ask around. Anyone'll be up for telling you. It's a madhouse."

They do go down to the diner, and they do ask around. Yeah, it sounds like a madhouse - but it sounds like the kind of place they're trying to set up, too. 

Alice in the diner has a card, which Rhodey tucks into his wallet while flirting with her, making a sixty year old woman blush as only an airman can, and they get an invite to come back for cherry pie along with a promise of refuge if getting in contact with  _the other one_ goes belly up for them.


End file.
